


Age Is Just a Number

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: It was never supposed to behisbirthday, it wastheirs, theirs...(Dante doesn't celebrate his birthday until he does.)





	Age Is Just a Number

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/gifts).



> Happy birthday <3

On their eighth birthday, their mother prepares enough chocolate cake for two hungry half-demon kids. It doesn’t stop them from fighting over who gets which part (“ _It had a blue decoration on it, it’s mine!_ ” and “ _You ate my rose!_ ” and “ _I wanted that part!_ ” and “ _It’s the last bite_!”), but ultimately they’re happy and sated, sitting next to their mother in the grass basking in the warm June sun. She hugs them both, and Dante plays with her long hair as Vergil quietly hums a song.

“I’ll make you two cakes next year,” their mum promises, and young as he is, Dante knows they’ll still argue who gets which, just as he knows that they’re brothers, _twins_ , and they will stay together forever, all their fights just bringing them closer.

If there truly was just one cake left in the world, Dante would give it all to Vergil, no hesitation.

***

Their ninth birthday finds Dante alone, hiding in an alley, his back pressed against a stone building as he hugs his mother’s amulet and the Rebellion to him. The sword is bigger than he is, but it is a comfort.

It’s raining, so of course his face is all wet.

He misses Vergil.

***

The years go by, and when someone asks Dante about his birthday, he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer any questions, really; he tells himself he’d never had family.

He counts, though.

Ten, eleven, twelve; he turns into a teenager alone and he trips over his suddenly too long limbs, certain that Vergil would be more elegant than he is.

Eighteen is just a number, but a lucky one: it’s not on their birthday, but he meets Vergil again: the perfect gift to make up for all those lost years.

They reunite again a year later and Dante almost kills his twin; maybe _does_ kill him—could Vergil survive the Underworld like that?

(Dante knows the answer.)

He spends months in an alcoholic daze after this; when Lady drags him out of it, it’s October. He kills a greater demon summoned into the capital and crawls right back into the bottle.

***

He’s twenty-eight when in one terrifying moment he learns both that he _hadn’t_ killed his brother almost ten years ago and that he certainly did, right now. He clutches at Vergil’s amulet; remembers how even bleeding out he’d grasped for it and not for a sword to defend himself with. He tries to reconcile the black knight he’d fought with his memory of his refined, arrogant brother.

He can’t.

He’s stone cold sober the next June, going out at night to challenge anyone and anything to take a shot at him, but there’s no one even half powerful enough.

***

He stops counting, after that, never really conscious for his birthday, but even as he gets progressively more hammered, never able to forget, either.

(It was never supposed to be _his_ birthday, it was _theirs, theirs_ …)

***

He finds a ghost in his brother in Nero and he doesn’t tell a soul: it’s better this way. He leaves the Yamato with him: he doesn’t need any more reminders of what he’s lost, of what he’s destroyed himself.

***

V brings him hope and destroys it in a few quiet sentences, enunciated with his calm, controlled voice.

Still, there’s one bright side: this _will_ be the last time he fights and defeats his brother. This will be the first time his brother fights and defeats him.

Dante climbs the Qliphoth and knows they’ll fall down together, this time, Vergil’s demonic heart and him.

***

They do fall together, if not in the way Dante could’ve ever foreseen.

He longs to touch Vergil and run his hands down his body; he settles for grabbing him in a battle as the Yamato pierces his chest or he plunges his own sword into Vergil’s stomach.

It’s like they’re back to their childhood: fighting each other tooth and nail, turning and pressing their backs together the moment any threat approaches.  

“You’re clingy,” Vergil comments one day when Dante keeps walking too close to him. He knows he does that; he doesn’t care. He doesn’t think Vergil cares, either: there’s no venom in his voice.

“Considering how long it’s been since we were together like that, I think I’m allowed,” he answers, exhilaration at having Vergil back making him honest.

Vergil hesitates. “ _How_ long has it been?” he asks at last.

Dante stumbles. “Wait, you—”

But of course he doesn’t know. How would he? There are no days or nights in hell; no way to measure the years he’d lost to Mundus’ torture and whatever happened to him after.

“I’ve never been that good at maths anyway,” he says.  

“ _Dante_.” Vergil’s voice carries a promise of violence, and Dante would gladly take him up on it if he’d thought that would make him drop the question.

Dante runs his hand down his face. “Mum was killed thirty-five years ago.”

Vergil freezes. Dante takes two more steps before stopping; wonders whether he should turn back to his brother or give him this moment.

He’d lived through it, aware of each passing year and each birthday he didn’t celebrate. Did Vergil ever truly grieve? As a kid on a run, as a demonic slave?

 _Fuck that_.

Dante turns back. Vergil twists his head, trying to hide his face, but Dante doesn’t care. He gathers his twin in his arms and holds on even as Vergil tries to shake him off, and then just shakes, hard enough that Dante opts to lower them to the ground and stay like that, kneeling in the Underworld’s dirt with Vergil falling apart in his embrace.

Vergil does stab him, in the end, but he doesn’t even nick any organ: Dante’s never known a more profound declaration of love.

***

He knows they passed their birthday at some point in the Underworld, but it doesn’t count if he wasn’t aware of the date, so now that they’re up and it’s June again, well.

Dante’s going to celebrate.

He wakes Vergil with a kiss, a chocolate cake on a plate carefully held in his hand.

Vergil gives him a surprised look as he cracks his eyes open.

“Happy birthday,” Dante tells him.

That Vergil did not know is evident, but he doesn’t miss a beat. “Happy birthday, brother.”


End file.
